San Bernardino Terrorist Attack: Cops Had 10 Percent Hit Rate

“The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s 55-page interoffice memo . . . lays out exactly how law enforcement officers from multiple agencies responded to the Inland Regional Center within minutes of the attack and killed the attackers in a massive gunfight nearby several hours later,” sbsun.com reveals, ahead of the memo’s release later today. Jobbing journo Suzanne Hurt [sic] gives us a glimpse into the gun battle that took out two terrorists . . .

San Bernardino County employee Syed Rizwan Farook was hit by at least 27 gunshots while his wife was struck by at least 15 — two to the top of the head — as officers fired about 440 rounds from rifles, shotguns and handguns — which the report found were proper uses of deadly force in self-defense and the defense of others.

The couple, who killed 14 people — including 13 of Farook’s coworkers — and shot 22 of the 57 survivors, fired about 80 rifle rounds and one handgun round at officers, according to the report.

No. I didn’t say they should have carte blanche to shoot at whatever they please. What I am saying is that the scenarios are typically different. Homeowner shoots burglar- Homeowner takes the fella to task on the homeowner’s home turf. Armed citizen vs mugger- 1v1, with the mugger often not knowing the citizen is armed. This is not to be a detriment to the ability of the successful armed citizens, but what I am saying is that these citizens aren’t taking volleys of rifle fire and firing back. Most DGUs I see in the news, the armed citizen is usually the only one that shoots. In this scenario, PD took 80+ rounds slung at them. I’d like to see how great your accuracy is in that scenario.

This is not directed at you, but Lots of people get on this site and go blah blah blah I would have done this or that, but unless you’ve actually faced that danger you really should keep your mouth shut about it. It’s different when it actually happens to you.

Wether your a cop, soldier, or civilian, your hit percentage is going to be far lower in real life then at the range… but more importantly in a situation such as this, it doesn’t matter who you are or what your hit percentage is because your going to be laying down suppressive fire if you want to win.

The dumb@$$ ignores that most of those “300 stray bullets” were fired into the vehicle where the terrorists made their final stand as many brave LEO’s closed in under fire to kill the jihadists with zero collateral death or injuries.

Cops fire over a hundred rounds in (what can only be assumed to be) a legit attempt to kill the occupant of the truck.

and….they manage to merely injure the occupants.

So, cali cops can’t tell two little Hispanic women from one big black man.
they can’t tell a blue truck from a charcoal grey one.
they can’t tell a little Toyota Tacoma from a big Nissan Titan.
they can’t tell a newspaper landing in a driveway from a gun shot.
they fired 103 rounds, and landed 2 for an accuracy rate of less than 2%.

Not operating in a hail of return fire, not dodging speeding vehicles, not even knowing who their targets actually were, eight officers unloaded into a non-threatening truck in a neighborhood….and failed to achieve a 2% hit rate (and were later not even charged with anything).

You want to say that cops and unbadged civilians’ DGUs are not comparable? I’ll totally agree. every bullet an unbadged civilian puts downrange had better be damned intentional because he owns it forever. Badged civilians can mag dump any time they can claim to feel a threat (even if they directly created their own threat situation), and even in the most egregious of circumstances can disassociate themselves from their actions. Those 8 cops sure as hell didn’t have the 4.2Million dollar settlement come out of their paychecks. The taxpayers got to foot that bill.

Or the Wall Street shooting from a few years back, where 9-12 people were shot including 1 killed.
Horrible event, especially when you find out the shooter only killed the 1 person. the rest were hit by the police while trying to kill the shooter.

Damn straight. I would more trust a CCW holder watching my back than a police officer any day. Think of it this way, CCW holders don’t have backup and don’t get the benefit of the doubt when they shoot. As a result I bet most CCW holders train way more with their firearms than a typical police officer. As a result they are more disciplined, have a higher hit probability and are more versed in threat deescalation. I would argue that with backup, a radio, a vest, various less than lethal gizmos and mandated and paid training it would be easier for police to perform. But that ain’t the case. Also the primary focus of police in a threat is officer safety first and bystanders second. It’s the other way around for CCW holders as you will definitely wish you were dead if you accidentally kill a bystander. The law will make sure of it.

How many? Plenty of DGUs take place in full shootout scenarios. Check out youtube.

Nobody is saying or even suggesting, except YOU, that we should compare all police shootings to all non-police DGUs. What would be useful is to compare results of both groups that are substantially similar in details, other than the police aspect.

If you control for the other factors, as is done in statistical analysis every day, then you can isolate the influence of the factor of interest, such as the police aspect. Just casually tossing out the “apples to oranges” cliche and being done with the matter is a cop-out bordering on rationalization.

What made the big hole below the left rear side window, about 1 o’clock from the gas filler? 50 BMG, to ensure she was not wearing a suicide vest and if so let it go bang while they were a safe distance? And where did that round end up stopping at?

I have to question any significant amount of suppressive fire on the part of cops. In a law enforcement situation bullets that miss your target can easily hit bystanders. It’s why I am very leery of handing cops automatic weapons.

The fact that most combat takes place in urban environments these days means the military also has to deal with this fact. Sometimes you don’t get to choose how you fight, you have to fight to win. If some antifa thugs full on attack your house you’ll be laying suppressive fire too.

If some antifa fucks full on attack my house, I won’t be laying down suppressive fire, I’ll be doing failure drills all day. Suppressive fire is only effective against people with the brain cells to be suppressed.

Calculating home owner DGU hit/miss ratio would be impossible to define because if a home owner pulls a piece and the perp runs off, that’s a success, but zero shots were fired. Plus, homeowners aren’t required to keep a log of all rounds issued to them, so, the math when shots WERE fired would also be sketchy.

I prefer our Austin cop who fired one shot and dropped the fruitcake dead at 103 yards. If it were needed, I’m counting on him whacking 68 crazies with 68 rounds, not just one. Especially if he’s not required to hold onto 2 horses next time.

That also accounts for suppressive fire. Just because the rounds don’t hit the target doesn’t mean they aren’t contributing to the success of the mission. Sometimes it makes sense to deliberately send rounds in the direction of the enemy even if they are currently behind cover and you know for a fact you won’t hit them.

Yeh, I get all that but for the type of wars we are fighting it still isn’t worth it. We send out patrols who get ambushed, then use multiple air assets to rescue them and bring in the wounded, and the result?? Hundreds of thousands dollars spent on each mission with net result maybe a couple bad guys taken out. Send out another patrol the next day start over again. Instead, we should be using less assets, snipers, spec forces to continue to take out their leaders. And, while I am on it, we should be taking out Pakistani leaders who aren’t helping stop the Taliban who are sponsored by them.

Yup, would have loved to watch the youtube of a 105 sent downrange to target from an AC-130. Then pull back zoom to show half of San Bernardino with a column of smoke in the center distance. Then do a follow cam with an element of F-18s laying down a few 1k’s.

If it takes more shots to put them down fire more! I would rather have a bunch of lousy shots show up quick and ready to shoot than a couple of crack shots ten minutes later. In a force on force encounter there will most likely be misses – lots of them. If you have to empty your mag while running to get one bullet into the enemy do it. Notice in this encounter, like many others with misses, that zero civilians were hurt with the misses – let alone over penetration.
Does anyone care how many misses occurred at the Normandy invasion?

* Maybe dude in the pic could improve his accuracy if there was a stock on that Mini?

My understanding is that most of those shots were fired into a truck, which may have been moving at the time. Seems to me that if you’re shooting at a person obscured by metal and tinted windows, you mostly just have to aim at the vehicle and hope for the best.

There was a police shooting in Portland not too long ago where the police were charged by a guy, fired 19 times and hit 6 times. Respectable accuracy versus a running guy.

The things that bother me about this story have nothing to do with a 10% hit rate.

It’s really easy for muslim terrorists to shoot unarmed people in a room.

It’s a lot harder for cops to shoot two terrorists fleing in an SUV and shooting at the cops.

As long as the cops hit no bystanders, good on ’em.

The things are really wrong with the story are:
1 – why were these scumbags (well, the fiancé anyway) let into America in the first place?
2 – why weren’t their social media posts and behavior exploited ahead of time? These terrorists nearly always give signals of their intentions.
3 – why weren’t any of the co-workers armed? Why in commiefornia do the scumbags disarm the law abiding and yet do NOTHING to clear-cut muslim fanatics?

From having been in combat in Vietnam (68-69), I can understand why the responding SBPD officers fired so many rounds when they were getting shot at. It’s one thing to be out on the KD range, holding and squeezing off rounds without any stress. But we all know that when the lead is flying AT you, sometimes those fine motor skills that enable pinpoint accuracy go south (like buck fever) and it takes some time to settle down and do some effective shooting (especially when the targets are moving). I’ve been told that U.S. forces in Vietnam fired over 70k rounds for every enemy troop killed (I’ve no idea what the figures are for later wars), so a 10 per cent hit rate for the SBPD, given the conditions under which they were reacting, sounds like things haven’t changed much from my day. I can’t criticize – I wasn’t there – but my experience jibes with the reported results.

The headline of this article is click-bait trying to disparage police and I think the writer should be taken to task for this considering how the inference of the article is about how crappy cops accuracy is. If the writer had done even a cursory google image search, he would have found multiple pictures of the vehicle the terrorist were in which it is full of bullet holes (probably several hundred). I don’t consider all those bullet holes in the vehicle misses but apparently the writer does.

Must be a slow day on writing about gun related issues if this is the best there is.

I’ve not seen video of the firefight, but depending on how much the occupants moved during it, I’d have to question how shots into the quarter panel at the taillight area and shots into the top edge of the windshield could be construed as hits.

I’d like to see a lot of these big mouths back up their words when the targets move and shoot back at you. Anyone with any real knowledge knows what suppressive fire is and when to use it. This was clearly a situation to do so. This wasn’t some random gang banger shooting over his head with a POS tech 9.

In all honesty I’ve never been under real honest to god fire from another person. But I got to think that dependent on distance a 10% hit rate on someone shooting at me, inside another car, that I probably cant see much of isn’t to shabby.

That’s why these new fangled MSR’s and service pistols come with the high cap mags!

440 v 81. Well…. The police definitely had fire superiority… I won’t question it but I can see how some people might ask about the wisdom of letting that many rounds go in an urban environment that isn’t in a war zone

You cop hating dumb@$$es simply can’t resist ignoring that the majority of rounds that didn’t actually impact with the bodies of the two San Benardino terrorists did actually impact the vehicle they were in as many brave LEO’s closed in under fire to kill them.

Never mind. When you have sling lead at someone who’s slinging lead back at you, maybe you’ll “get it”. When your in a firefight your not gonna think about how many rounds your slinging or where you are. Your goal is going to be to survive and win. You can make all the sarcastic smart ass comments you want but when the metal meets the meat, the last thing your going to think about is all that bullshit unless you want to die.

The problem here Hank is that I already know all that, and in fact I’ve been shot at. Your comment falls into ridiculous if you just read my comment history here and that wouldn’t even give you a decent idea of my life experience which would make your comments here even more laughable.

What I don’t get is how you assume that I support mag capacity bans based on my comment. Explain to me, where in the fuck do you get the idea that my statement that the cops established fire superiority in this case was, in fact, me arguing that magazine capacity either matters or should be regulated?

I have never argued mag capacity laws to be logical, moral or worth anything. I don’t support them and I have vocally advocated against mag bans. Yet, somehow in a comment where I don’t even address the topic you manage to pull my opinion out of that comment and get it wrong.

So tell me where the fuck you got the idea that I support mag capacity limits out of my OP. Tell me. Explain your motherfucking argument and how you decided that I was somehow supporting something that I didn’t support in the comment and NEVER HAVE supported. Please, tell me how you read my mind to figure out things that I think that even I don’t know I’m thinking. To paraphrase a chemistry teacher of mine: Show your motherfucking work or shut the fuck up.

Sorry, I don’t take this kind of idiotic tomfuckery well and that’s what you’re engaged in; flat out stupid tomfuckery. The best I can say would be that you replied to the wrong person but clearly that’s not the case because you’ve now doubled down.

So, one last time: Please explain how simply stating that the police, in this instance, gained fire superiority of nearly 5.5 to 1, and then stating that I don’t judge them for firing that many rounds, amounts to supporting a magazine ban.

Typical TTAG click bait Farago loves to toss out for the cop hating regulars drawn to his blog. The truth is that responding LEO’s located, contained, and while taking fire in a deadly gunfight, killed the two San Bernardino terrorists without any additional collateral deaths or injury to citizens or LEO’s.

Convenient how Robert neglected to report the truth that most if not all of the “misses” did in fact hit the vehicle the two jihadist were contained in during their futile attempt to flee and final stand as the responding LEO’s bravely closed in and terminated their murderous rampage.

FYI, the Frank Hamer led posse that ambushed Bonnie and Clyde fired an estimated 167 rounds into the 1934 Ford V8 Deluxe Sedan from a distance of TWENTY FEET; the coroner’s report listed the number of bullet exit wounds on Parker’s corpse at 26, and 17 exit wounds on Barrow’s corpse; that’s 43 exit wounds on both corpses combined, so the actual number of hits on the white trash crime duo would be less than 43 after factoring in that several gunshots sustained by Bonnie Parker had already passed through the body of Clyde Barrow. That means the percentage of “hits” in that legendary fusillade unleashed by those famous lawmen with long guns from a distance of approximately 7 yards was less than 25% if you use cop haters math and count the other 124 rounds that hit Bonnie and Clyde’s death car as misses.

10% hit rate on the BGs but no collateral damage? I’ll take it. In fact, it sounds to me like those Berdoo gendarmes could teach a thing or two to cops everywhere, who usually manage to shoot a hostage or bystander or two whenever they unholster.

“cops everywhere, who usually manage to shoot a hostage or bystander or two whenever they unholster”; now there’s one of those cop hating dumb@$$ TTAG regulars; Farago tosses out the read meat click bait and they reliably bite never passing up an opportunity to hate on the police. Too funny!

Your mutilation of written English and the abortion that passes for logic in your brain is what’s funny.

Go back to troll school, learn a few things about English and maybe get yourself an actual edu-ma-cation. Perhaps then your shitposting skills will improve. Until then, you’re not even a troll, you’re a hack attempting to troll.

Hell, you’re not even a hack. [Deletes his own flame.]

It’s both pathetic and amazing at the same time and probably warrants a ton of scientific investigation into how you manage to breathe without assistance.

LOTs of arm chair QB’ing in game on in this article and thread. Seeing s I’ve been in my share of gunfights, I’ll chime in with actual experience and knowledge.

1: as noted above, suppressive fire in a gunfight is a thing. If you can keep their heads down, you can maneuver and eliminate the threat.

2. Ever shoot through mediums such as a car window or car door? I have. ALOT. It changes the trajectory the bullet drastically and decreases that probability of a hit.

3. This 10 percent ratio seems close to what line soldiers achieve in combat from my recollection of literature/studies I have read. This was not a one way range. Make no mistake, what these officers experienced was combat masquerading as a police action.

Some of you need to get off of your high horse, take a knee, face out and drink some water. You’ve neither the experience, training or logic to make some of the ignorant ass comments you are making while denigrating some men who did a hell of a job given the circumstances.

While the killing was taking place, the cops were not there. They played catch up later. Firearm free zones work? If a citizen was armed and able to intervene would the bloodshed somehow have been worse? Lot of variables, one constant: unarmed, law abiding citizens die first.

If I remember correctly, a study done of New York Police Department shootings resulted in the following:

1) Officer hit what they were aiming at 25% of the time (the result of minimal to adequate training).

2) Criminals hit what they were aiming at 11% percent of the time (the result of no or minimal training.)

I’d say that if you can hit what you’re aiming at – including under stress and breathing hard – 50-75% of the time, you’d pretty much be invulnerable to harm in a gunfight – except for bad luck, of course. 🙂

I can’t understand why anyone carrying a firearm for protection wouldn’t train to that level.

In this case, if the cops were ACTUALLY firing suppressive fire, then the ten percent hit rate ON THE TARGETS is reasonable. If they were just “spraying” – which is DIFFERENT from “suppressive fire” – then it’s not reasonable.

If you are not using suppressive fire for the express purpose of suppressing the enemy for the purpose of movement or to disrupt a massed enemy charge, you should be using aimed single shots, regardless of your weapon.

There was a case in New York where a large number of officers engaged a single criminal. They fired hundreds of rounds into a building, and shrugged off the fact that many of these rounds were endangering the neighborhood. The criminal, OTOH, fired aimed shots and wounded several officers to the police’ chagrin, leading expert Evan Marshall to state sarcastically, “You don’t think he aimed, do you?” The criminal evaded capture and was later captured without incident on the street.

When cops don’t fire more than, IIRC, 400 rounds a YEAR to qualify with their weapon, you can’t expect quality shooting skills. Compare that to Navy Seals who, according to Dick Marcinko, fired thousands of rounds a WEEK to get good (and had the armorers to keep the guns in repair.)

If you want cops who can hit what they’re aiming at, pay the taxes for the police department budget to support the logistics and training time required to up their skills.

The ‘responsible for every bullet’ faction is onto something in most cases, as is the ‘don’t muzzle friendlies’ camp.

However; the further away from classic citizen on BG DGU one gets and the closer to gunfight the less these things matter and the less attention anyone can pay to them. They aren’t bad ideas so much as they are impractical in combat and generally not observed under combat conditions.

Fighting is dangerous and gunfighting is lethal. Team on team, long arm on long arm fighting is combat. Stray rounds are never going to be as dangerous as two suicidal murders on the loose.

That the police in this case managed to prevail with no friendly casualties or collateral damage is a testament to good training and brave men, and likely a bit of luck. That said, under incoming fire ones responsibility is to the mission, which in this case was simply to end the threat. These men ended the threat and accomplished the mission well within any reasonable ROE one could formulate.

Someone upstream commented that this was combat masquerading as a police action, and that is sure what it sounds like. I don’t fault anyone for their actions under fire unless those actions were detrimental to the mission and they knew or should have known as much. I don’t see that anything the police did was detrimental to their mission (protect the public by ending the threat).

Aside from the basics of manual of arms, individual marksmanship and teamwork I doubt these cops had training to prepare for this and they seem to have performed admirably none the less. I really don’t understand the rancor.

Nobody was shooting at the two Terrorists as they shot innocent civilians at point blank range. Easy to hit a target when he is less than ten feet in front of you with no way to defend themselves. Much harder to hit a target some distance away and shooting back. Also, the Terrorists don’t mind dieing. I would assume they walked into the situation expecting to die. The LEO’s, on the other hand, want to go home to their families at the end of their shift. That is all.